New Zealand is one of the most scenic countries in the world. It also has a government that is focused on improving the delivery of citizen centric services.
Under the Information and Communications Technology act (ICT), the government has launched Telecommunications as a Service (TaaS) initiative. Key features of TaaS are as follows:
• Provides a range of cross-government telecommunications and managed security services that allow various government departments and agencies to easily connect with each other and with their customers.
• Services are provided "as a service". Services are priced using flexible methods like per user per month. Agencies can easily scale up and scale down the services based on their requirements.
• These services do not require significant upfront capital expenditure. So agencies do not need to go through long and expensive procurement processes.
• Ongoing maintenance of the infrastructure and solutions will be done by the Telcos, thereby making the latest technology available for the agencies.
• Agencies can select individual services from a variety of providers. The services are expected work together seamlessly across providers and agencies creating a sort of internet for the government.
• Agencies can leverage data and information that is collected by their peer agencies as appropriate security policies would be put in place by the Telco providers.